Be a Player

Be a Player is the renamed Superstar mode for Connected Careers. This is like the classic Superstar mode: you create a player and gather Legacy Points to get into the Hall of Fame. Once you select to Be a Player, you'll get the opportunity to possess a real-life player on any team, play as a Hall of Fame legend that you have unlocked in Ultimate Team, or you can create a player of your own. If you're creating a player from scratch, you'll have to select his position, team, and "backstory" before continuing.

Selecting his position is the most important decision you make. When playing Be a Player, you locked into that player, and can never switch; you'll leave the rest of the team up to the AI. Be sure to pick a position you enjoy playing! For a breakdown of what each position and specialty means, check out our Be a Player Position Breakdown section. Text next to the position will do a good job of explaining it, and will even feature the name of a famous player who embodies the specialty as well to give you a good idea of what you'll be doing.

After that comes team selection, and you can choose to be on any of the 32 teams (unless someone is already controlling them in online Connected Careers). You could make selection a bit more exciting by using random generator, such as Random.org to make your selection for you.

After selecting your team, it'll be time to select your backstory. This will affect your starting ratings, as well as the difficulty of your season goals...

High Draft: You were selected in the first round, and the eyes of the entire league are on you. Your character will have an Overall rating in the upper-70s to low-80s, and your season goals will be difficult. You might get to start near the end of your first season.

Low Draft: You were selected in a late round, and the team wants you to succeed even though the rest of the league doesn't really care. Your character will have an Overall rating in the mid- to low-70s, and your season goals will be challenging. It's unlikely that you'll start until your second season.

Undrafted: You were signed from free agency in the pre-season after the draft to fill a roster hole, and nobody knows you exist. Your character will have an Overall rating in the 60s, and your season goals will be easy if you can get on the field. You probably won't start until the middle of your second season.

As of the first patch, EA added an option for Be a Player called "Instant Starter." Enabling this option forces the AI to start all user players regardless of their overall ratings. For online Connected Careers, the option is limited to the commissioner's choice, but it's all-or-nothing: either everyone is forced to start, or no one is. If the option is disabled, players will only start when they have the highest overall rating of their position for their team. See the Bugs page for a possible problem relating to this new option.

Once you select your backstory, your final step is to make your player himself. You have to settle for a bunch of generic body parts unless you have a GameFace. Note that your character's name, scheme, appearance, and everything else is permanent (except specifically for your GameFace, which you can re-download if you update it). Once again, you can always roll up a new character if necessary.

You'll be able to preview his ratings and attributes here, but you won't be able to change anything. For that, you'll need to train and collect XP.

After starting your league, head to My Career in the menu, then press A (Xbox 360) or X (PlayStation 3) when you highlight the "View My Goals" box at the top. This will take you to your weekly, milestone, and season goals.

Weekly goals represent only the next game, if applicable. These will give you minor XP rewards; nothing huge, but they'll be fairly steady and should give you a focus on your game plan. For example, you may see the goal "Score 3 Passing TDs." If you want that goal, you'll know to abandon the run once you get close to the goal line.

Milestones are like Achievements / Trophies, except they give your character XP instead of a nice shiny stamp on your gamer profile. These range from easy to stupidly difficult, and can be affected by the timer length. For example, recovering 5 fumbles in a season isn't hard when you run 15-minute quarters without an accelerated clock... but it'll be nearly impossible with 2-minute quarters with a 20-second accelerated clock! Your best bet, unless you're a completionist, is to ignore them entirely; let them come naturally, if at all. (They have nothing to do with the aforementioned Achievements / Trophies, so you can still get 100% completion without them.)

Season goals are entirely more relevant to your character. Season goals are what the team expects you to do this year, and you risk getting traded or released if you can't fulfill them. Teams with low prestige and players with low Legacy Scores will have easy goals. You can see on the right that the easiest goal for this player's season is "0+ Tackles," a goal that's literally impossible to fail. But as you level up and perform better, the goals will get tougher, up to and including "Win the Super Bowl" as your ultimate goal.

Goals are where you'll earn the majority of your XP. In the above screenshot, you see this player will earn a whopping 20,000 XP if he gets 15 tackles this season. 20,000 XP is equal to the number of potential XP he could earn if he runs nothing but perfect, full-length practices throughout the entire season. If you've got confidence in your game, you could ignore practices entirely and still rapidly accumulate XP if you simply succeed in your goals.

Note: Season goal rewards are given to you after the Super Bowl is played or simulated, not when the goal becomes relevant. For example, if the above player collects 20 tackles before the playoffs, he still won't get his 20,000 XP (plus 5,500 XP for meeting the other goals) until after the Super Bowl concludes and a winner is crowned.

Goals change every year, and remember that the NFL is a "What have you done for me lately?" business. If you have several bad seasons in a row, no one will care that you scored 50 sacks in your first season. Play hard, keep training, and you can at least maintain job security.